The focus of e-Government should be on the users – citizens and businesses. Therefore, an important element of M&E is to measure user satisfaction: are targeted audiences finding e-Government services responsive to their needs? Simply put, e-Government managers should measure whether intended audiences are using e-Government services and, if not, why not. Demand-side indicators include the preferences of citizen and business users, attitudes towards e-Government, willingness to use online services, and perceived advantages of and barriers to usage. See Rand Europe, “
Benchmarking e-Government in US and Europe” p. 20. Demand for e-Government may be measured in a variety of ways, including online surveys of users, accessible via e-Government sites; focus groups; and user testing.
A leading example of measurement of user attitudes towards e-Government via surveys is the “
Top of the Web,” a user satisfaction and usage assessment of e-Government sites, in which close to 50,000 Europeans are surveyed on their views on e-Government and their satisfaction with various e-Government services in their countries.
The
eUser Project has developed an Inspection
Evaluation Framework that uses five characteristics to measure the relevance to users of an e-Government system or function:
- Visibility refers to the degree to which a system or function can become known to individual non-users.
- Perceived usefulness and ease of use refer to the usefulness and ease of (access and) use of the system or function from the viewpoint of individual non-users.
- Availability / Approachability refers to the degree to which all types of individual users can reach the entry point (s) of the system or function.
- Quality of interaction experience encompasses the quality of interaction perceived by individual actual users and refers to the degree to which a system or function can be used to achieve useful and quality results.
- Relationship maintainability is the degree to which a good relationship with individual system or function users is effectively cultivated and maintained while the user is not working on the system.
Metrics should be developed as part of the stakeholder consultation process that is key to successful e-Government planning. Increasing the “voice of the user” in the e-Government planning and design process can also help identify KPIs or other metrics for use in monitoring implementation. Stakeholder consultation at all stages may prevent investment in projects that are too far ahead of user interest and capacity or that fail to meet current user needs.
Australia M & E Case Study
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